Slime Doubles Down

Yesterday, in the context of discussing Donald Trump’s latest publicity stunt with his admired young friend Kim Jong-un, I noted, as did many others, Trump’s answer about dead American student Otto Warmbier, who was tortured so badly in a North Korean prison (for stealing a poster) that he died shortly after being released to U.S. authorities.

Trump directly exonerated Kim of any wrongdoing in the case, noting that “prisons are tough places,” and further that Kim denied having any knowledge of the torture, which denial was good enough for Trump, who knows an honest man when he sees one.

Apparently, Warmbier’s family, along with a few other semi-rational Americans, took exception to Trump’s obvious act of cowardice — meekly defending a communist dictator while standing in a communist nation where the U.S. lost a demoralizing war (a war which Trump avoided with dubious medical excuses, but later invoked as a jokey metaphor for his love life) — and criticized him for spitting on the memory of a dead young American torture victim.

Trump, naturally, has taken to Twitter to clear up this terrible “misrepresentation” — which was in fact an unedited video clip of his actual words — and in the process, equally naturally (for a Trump), doubled down on the sliminess of his original remarks.

He begins by claiming he was misinterpreted, but he never tells us what the supposed misinterpretation was. He then does what he always does when he is about to do something hyper-Trump-level scummy: He boasts about the wonderful things he has done. “Remember, I got Otto out along with three others. The previous Administration did nothing, and he was taken on their watch.”

Then, in with the slime: “Of course I hold North Korea responsible for Otto’s mistreatment and death.” This is the only part of his reply that actually addresses the criticism, and as everyone can see, he completely lies about the issue. The question is not whether Otto was tortured in North Korea — one could hardly deny that — but whether Kim Jong-un should be held responsible, which is what Trump flatly denied, choosing to trust his friend’s word. In other words, the only misrepresentation here is Trump’s deliberate worminess in trying to escape from legitimate criticism of his cowardice by lying about what he was being criticized for.

Then he doles out some empty, generic praise of the Warmbiers as a “symbol of strong passion and strength,” before closing with the absurd claim, “I love Otto and think of him often!” (Exclamation mark, no less!)

He loves Otto and thinks of him often. Does anyone believe one word of that? Why say something so obviously ridiculous? Because Trump is a demagogue, a TV celebrity, a professional liar who has built fame and fortune on selling his name, emperor’s-new-clothes style. He has convinced so many people to fall for his lies that he now believes, like an old-fashioned Hollywood diva or a modern pop singer, that saying “I love you!” to his adoring public covers for everything, and washes any bad feelings away.